The Unroutine Routine
by QuietDragon
Summary: There were many things Tabitha -Homura- was warned about prior to joining Team Magma and many things he later came to accept as a "normal" in the organization; unfortunately for him, Brody -Bannai- fell into neither catagory. Humorous genfic, one-shot with no pairings.


**Prompt**: Normal (for Rocket100)  
**Rating**: PG for mild language, as always.  
**Warnings**: Nothing objectionable.  
**Author's Notes**: A Team Magma fanfic Tabitha and Brody, again. xD

* * *

I can remember joining Team Magma clearly. Maxie made it a more formal affair than it really needed to be, but that should have been the least of my worries.  
I remember hastily scribbling down my name in blue ink just to get it over with, leaving splotches blotting the ends of letters where I lifted the pen.  
I remember the crisp letters printed on that smooth white paper.  
I remember Maxie's words, cautionary than congratulatory, I remember _everything._

Nowhere on that paper did it forewarn me about _any of this_, nowhere in his speech did he mention _anything_ about what my life was going to be like.

Nowhere did Maxie mention that eventually, some guy with crazy hair and what appeared to be a stylized eyelash design on his cheek would become my unofficial partner; he never told me what the heck that thing on his cheek was supposed to be, just smiled and said that it was his "symbol."

Held out his hand, he did; even _smiled_ in a calm, laidback way, introduced himself to me as "Brody" and said how-do-you-do, and so I reached out and shook it. He seemed like a normal guy (with really weird hair), and was fairly polite to boot; It was _deception_ of the worst kind, the kind where you actually start to imagine a nice, lasting partnership where you could accomplish your goals and make work more enjoyable, and— what the _hell_, Brody?!

Next thing I knew, I had the green-orange-haired so-called polite, normal guy pulling me close to him by the arm and scrutinizing me with this hard-eyed seriousness that came from I don't even _know_ where. Wherever did that polite, nice guy with the calm smile run off to? I missed him already.

Up until recently, I still did whenever he left, in between bouts of wondering if it was all an act. Now I'm almost _sure_ it wasn't an act. That was just the way Brody _was_; completely and utterly unpredictable in the way he acted.

Then, after running the jagged ends of my cape between his fingers, he smiled and stepped back, before bowing respectfully, not to apologise, but to say that he was depending on me now.

I was half-tempted to ask him what shade of weird was the sky back in his home world, but, feeling Maxie's eyes on my back, I said "same here" and left it at that.

Nobody told me "what the _hell_, Brody?!" was going to be a staple in the freak fest that was my life after he came in.

Not a single day passed without one of these incidents occurring, unless Brody was off on missions. Then it was even worse, because when he came back, it was time for "what the _hell_, Brody?!" ten-fold, to make up for the day(s) he wasn't around to make my life an all-encompassing black-hole of perpetual _weird_.

On a normal day, having one of anything that comes in pairs (shoes, socks, gloves, etc.) being "borrowed" by him without my knowledge or consent was a regular occurrence. Because Brody was a mismatched freak of nature and wanted to reflect that in his clothes.  
Brody went through hair colors the way normal people go through pairs of underwear, maybe even faster, so seeing him go from red hair with neon green highlights to jet-black hair with strips of fuchsia, while shocking at first, I've now come to accept as normal.  
But only after many, many weeks. To date, he has yet to repeat a single color combination.

I remember one incident early on where I spent the day wondering who this new recruit was and how I could have _missed_ him, only to realize by the end of it that it was Brody with a dye job when the "new recruit" came over to me with pierced ears, informing me that some ancient cultures believed piercing the orifices of the body prevents possession by evil spirits.  
"Oh," I said blandly. "Hey, Brody. So you're piercing your lip next?"  
"No," he said with a smile, waving a hand. "I just pierced my ears because I might need to wear earrings with a disguise. Anymore strange holes could give me away."  
"Ah."

That's an example of the normal, every-day Brody weirdness level.

As for the days following a mission when Brody delivers the weird with compound interest, try as I might, I cannot find a single reoccurring theme as these incidents are entirely _random_.

So instead, I'll recount my "favorite."

There was a day was when Brody arrived at our rendezvous point, limping on one leg, grinning and waving like a total loon, dragging behind him a big black garbage bag.

I stared in dumbfounded silence for all of two minutes before realizing that the scene unfolding before me was another classic "what the _hell,_ Brody?!" in the making.

"Brody," I sighed. "What've you got in the bag?"

When he finally made his way over, I could see the Flames making their way up the hill, some had their arms around others' shoulders for support, one of them as leaning on a golf club acting as a makeshift walking stick, and one Flame was being carried, seemingly unconscious, in the arms of another.

I lifted my brow and waited for Brody to explain.

When he reached me, he only lowered the bag before falling to his knees, red cape covering one arm, and panted.  
"Brody," I began calmly, "you went to the shopping center, not war. What, exactly, happened?"  
He shook his head. "It... _was_ war."  
I didn't understand. "... What?"

You see, this was the reason why Brody was banned from buying supplies or even the groceries, in part due to his spontaneous purchases of things that "might come in handy someday" or he "just felt like I had to buy it!"... but mostly due to this stunt.

He finally opened his eyes and lifted his head to meet my gaze, silver hair plastered to his skin with sweat. "With the Aquas."

I blinked again. "With the... _Aquas?_"

He smirked and sat up, reverting to that strange seriousness. "I know how much you love your rivalry with that Shelly, so as soon as I spotted her and some of her underlings, I tore into the aisle she was heading into, and engaged in a mad dash to the items they were eyeing!"  
Keep in mind that he was relaying this tale in the most serious manner with his yellow eyes narrowed into a chilling glare and the nastiest of smirks on his face.  
"But she played dirty and tried to run over my feet with the wheels on her shopping cart- we were going so fast, I didn't see it coming, so that's how I got injured, so the Flames set traps, but we both ended up caught in the fray, and by the time we reached..."

He waved his hand in the drection of the overstuffed black plastic bag.  
"Team Magma had claimed its victory. But they were not going to back down, so it turned into a free-for-all battle royale!"

The Flames, in civilian drab, assembled into something that vaguely resembled a straight line behind him.

"Security tried to restrain us and quell the fighting, but then we broke out of there and took every last one of _everything_ the Aquas wanted! And stole most of their other bags!"  
"... They banned you from the stores, didn't they?"  
"It doesn't matter, I'll disguise myself."

I was tired, I was hungry, and Brody's stupid story, while entertaining, wasn't exactly helpful. I reached to open the bag and peer inside, then blinked in reaction, before reaching in and digging through the bags and items.  
"... What the _hell_, Brody?!"

I turned back around to face him, clutching in one arm bags of scuba gear and in the other, a bag of sanitary pads.  
"Did you get _anything_ that we could actually _use?!_"

He blinked, sitting up, air of seriousness completely evaporating, replaced by his perpetually calm smile. "Oh, I thought they might come in handy, sometime! you never know. Maybe you'll want to go scuba diving sometime before we expand the land."

"... And the pads?"

"Install a pad-dispenser in the bathroom?"

Nobody _ever_ warned me about any of this insanity.

And yet, somehow, Brody's quirkiness and his firm resolve to never do anything that makes any kind of sense, and— especially of all— his weirdness, while aggravating and annoying, are a constant in my ever-changing life as part of Team Magma. This unroutine routine has, in a way, given me a sense of normalcy that I would be entirely lacking without; even if the way Brody works will forever remain a complete mystery to me.

(For those of you who are wondering, yes, I did install the dispenser, yes, the girls did love it, and yes, the scuba gear did come in handy on a mission.)


End file.
